


Reign Over Me

by lalalive



Category: Muse
Genre: Drug Addiction, Drug Use, M/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-01
Updated: 2013-10-01
Packaged: 2017-12-28 04:36:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/987722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalalive/pseuds/lalalive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Dom looks back on the affair he and Matt had throughout countless hotel rooms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reign Over Me

**Author's Note:**

> This story I guess is inspired by films like Same Time Next Year, The Four Seasons, 28 Hotel Rooms, and a load of other films based on illicit affairs and doomed romances. This started as porn and turned into this? And like...was being worked on with a Kanye West soundtrack? Idek, but I'm sorry

**104**

I hate this room. And I don’t know if it’s because you aren’t in it or because you won’t ever know I’m here. I’m not even entirely sure why I came. To be honest, this feels more like a lie than anything we ever did in our three years together. We saw the world as insiders looking out, over skylines and city lights; countless locations, endless hotels with names we couldn’t pronounce, and too many hours of jet lag, but we never once took each other home.

I feel like I’m breaking every rule we ever set for one another. There’s a joke in there somewhere, about how you would have liked the danger and the thrill of this penetration your private life - your other life - but I don’t have the heart to find it. When you aren’t here, there’s really no reason to be reckless at all. From the start, it was only ever you, my catalyst.

It’s raining today. Honestly, it seems only natural that it would. You always loved the rain.

**926**

I wasn’t paying attention when he passed me the drink, took me several minutes before I even noticed it was there. It sat just beyond the rim of my mobile, a barely there reminder of reality. He was sitting several stools away, sipping whiskey with a coy smile and a slight glint in his eye I couldn’t define.

He said his name was Matthew and that I looked like I needed a drink. He smiled like he knew what I wanted; I smiled because I knew I wanted him.

Within minutes he was sitting next to me, asking me about my name, my job, my life. I asked him why those things mattered and he offered me a casual shrug and said, ‘isn’t that how people get to know one another?’ I told him I had a girlfriend, he said he had a cat named Cleo.

It took three drinks to get him into my lap, two more before he pulled me into the hotel elevator with my hand down the front of his trousers and his tongue deep in my mouth. I whined when he removed his mouth from mine and he spoke with his eyes closed, lips wet with my saliva.

‘I’m on the fifth floor,’ he whispered.

‘I have the penthouse suite.’

‘Definitely yours then.’

I laughed as he slapped the button, moaned like a prayer as he massaged my tongue. He whimpered like a whore, and I remember thinking he actually might have been. He wore an expensive suit in an expensive hotel bar, dragged me to the elevators like he’d done it countless times before with nameless ambassadors and banking tycoons.

We fucked like it was our first date, our wedding night, make up sex, and a way to say goodbye. I saw my future play out in his eyes and felt the hollow build of ‘what if’ coil behind my orgasm.

I woke up with come stained sheets and his number in my phone.

**487**

Two months and countless text messages later, we were wrapped in silk sheets somewhere in Chicago. Running my hands through his hair made me forget the lies I’d told to get there. It didn’t matter how we pulled it off, only that we did.

We said nothing as we watched a storm roll through the city, wind whipping raindrops at glass windows. I felt his toes clench as he changed his position, felt his dick press against my thigh and had to stifle a moan. He caught my bottom lip between his teeth and tugged.

I thought of Sarah and her straight teeth.

I thought of Sarah and her tight pussy.

I thought of all the ways I was a liar and a sinner and I laughed because the closeness of him made me feel completely, ridiculously human.

He pressed a kiss to my collarbone, and I could feel the smile teasing at my lips. He was infectious.

'I love the rain,' he whispered. 'Its so soothing.'

I laughed. 'This isn't just rain, it's the apocalypse out there.'

'Then I'm glad I get to die here with you.'

He said the words with such sincerity, I saw the room become our temple.

He said the words with such sincerity, I imagined him already gone.

**3114**

The humidity in Tokyo was oppressive, sometimes making it hard to breathe, but the suffering was worth it because he could hold my hand in front of one thousand nameless faces. We got lost twice, found ourselves walking down streets we couldn’t pronounce. The hotel room was an oasis of air conditioning, drying the sheen of sweat that had collected at his hairline. 

I was waiting to be overwhelmed with disgust and rage as I watched him drag his nose along a line of white powder. Maybe it was the way he tipped his head back to take the drip, or maybe it was the part of his lips as he opened his eyes, but all I could feel was a heated affection for his reckless edge.

When he brought his eyes back to mine, he looked dangerous and alive.

‘Join me.’ He was drunk on the thought of a joint high.

‘No.’

‘Baby, please.’

He stood like he was rising out of the dust, the filth of his smile making him a god amongst men. I couldn’t find the will to move as he approached me, eyes blown wide with cocaine and arousal. He was electric blue and flecked gold. He was beautiful; he was mine. 

I didn’t even notice the way his hands were working at his shirt buttons, before his shirt was off and thrown to the floor. 

‘What are you doing?’ I asked, my words stuttering and incredulous. 

He said nothing, just worked at his belt as he walked backwards. He was discarding clothes before my eyes, moving to the door with a sly grin and wet lips.

‘Matt!’

He was down to his boxers, and I rushed through the room to reach him before he ripped those off too. 

‘I love you.’

It was the first time he said it. The words fell from his mouth with the same ease he would tell me he liked my shoes, my hair, my dick. He didn’t give me time to process the words or how I felt about them, just took off down the hallway, boxers discarded and forgotten. I dove into the bathroom to grab a robe and chased after him, laughing the whole way. 

He was screaming it.

‘I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU.’

And I didn’t care that he was high or that the only people to hear it were strangers who would never see us again, I just kept running after him with my arms outstretched and my chest burning with love and laughter. 

I caught him by the elevator, before he could step in and drag us down to the lobby. Wrapped in the robe, he melted into my embrace and kissed me first with his soul then with his mouth. 

‘I love you, too.’ 

**104**

Tears burn on the way down, worse than a straight shot of absinthe. I’m swimming in memories of you, letting myself drown in your absence and the noise of the rain. I imagine you laying next to me, nosed pressed into my neck as you giggle in that high pitched frequency I’ve grown addicted to.

I mindlessly reach for your hand.

I grasp only rough cotton bedding. 

A gasped sob escapes my mouth and I’m ashamed of myself. Crying is useless these days, perhaps it always was. It fixes nothing and it won’t fix us or you.

I want to tell you I need you. I want to tell you I miss you. 

I listen to the rain and I pretend it brings you back. 

**731**

‘What’s she like?’

I furrowed my brow and looked at him. He was on the opposite end of the settee, not bothering to look up from his book. I ran my toes over his.

‘Who?’

‘Your wife,’ he said, casually. ‘What’s her name again?’

I bit the inside of my cheek before speaking. ‘Sarah.’

‘Right, Sarah.’ He lingered on the ‘s’ for just a second, making her name sound like a hiss. 

I leaned over and reached for his book, tipping it back to reveal his face. Every single organ in me swelled with warmth at the sight of his eyes behind reading glasses. 

‘Are you jealous?’ I asked him.

‘Curious is a more accurate term,’ he replied without a pause. 

He’d never asked about her before, never really seeming to care. We knew what we had, messy and secret as it was, and that was all that mattered to him. So I told him what he needed to know.

I told him she was smart, that she was funny, and that she was good at art. She liked expensive wine, but preferred homemade food to anything she could order out. She was Canadian, her eyes were brown. She was nothing like him.

I didn’t tell him she was beautiful, even though it was true. I didn’t want to admit to myself that she was beautiful, but she would never be as beautiful as him.

‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘Surely there must be someone back home.’

‘There is,’ he said, flatly.

‘That’s it? That’s all I get after telling you about my wife?’ 

He smirked, and peered at me over his glasses. ‘He is not my husband and he is not you. That’s all I care about.’ 

I would never be sure if it was an accusation - he leaned over and kissed me so passionately I found I didn’t even mind if it was. 

**510**

I was shouting at him, blinded by my own fear and rage. I knew he was reckless, knew that he liked to push mortality to the limit; live without fear and die with the taste of joy still on his tongue. But in my wildest dreams, I could never have imagined he would be so stupid because he was always infinitely smarter than I would ever be.

‘So what is this? You’re an addict?’ I could hear myself and I hated the judgemental edge to my voice.

‘I’m not an addict!’ His eyes were wild and vibrating with a stunning sort of rage that made me want to kiss him until it hurt.

‘You’re fucking your dealer, Matt, what else am I supposed to assume?’

‘Don’t assume anything, it’s none of your business!’ he spat. 

‘Fuck’s sake, don’t be like that. What the fuck are we even doing if I’m not allowed to care?’ 

‘I don’t need you to care, not about this!’

I paused, taken aback by the venom he was spitting.

‘I just want to help!’ I eventually managed.

‘I don’t need your help, and I certainly don’t need your pity. I’ve heard it thousands of times before. “Poor Matt, the deadbeat, the fuck up. How can we save him?”’ He’d gone off on a tirade, about people and things I had never heard before. ‘It’s been like that for years, Dom. I get it from everyone. The withering looks and the sad, apologetic smiles like they actually care that my life is in a constant state of decay. You are the only one who looks at me like I matter and I will be damned if you turn into one of them.’

‘Who are you...I-’ I cut myself off, confused about everything he had just thrown at me. I shook my head and regained my composure. ‘That’s no excuse, Matt! Don’t you see how mindblowingly stupid you’re being -’ 

He threw the glass of whiskey he was drinking at the wall, let it shatter into diamonds as he breathed through a magnificent state of wrath.

'You aren't there! You don't know anything about me or who I am. Not really. In the grand scheme of things, you spend five minutes in my life before you disappear for months at a time.'

I'd never hated him more than in that moment, listening to him tear apart everything we had built over two years and months of anguished separation. He was tearing it down like he was a hurricane and I was the wake. Perhaps, it was worse because I had never loved anyone or anything more than him. He scared me, and I was scared because I loved him deep into the marrow of my bones. 

'Just go back to your perfect life with Sarah. Seriously just go, because you will never be prepared to handle the sheer disaster that I am and always will be.'

‘Don’t do this. Don’t push me away just because I’m stepping too close to your reality.’

‘Go.’

It went against every nerve in my body to leave him, but I left that evening on a red eye flight with the taste of acid on my tongue and heart of ash. 

**342**

I was barely in the room before he was at me, mouth clamped over mine and hands fisted in my hair. I wanted him close, inside me, around me, above me. Every inch of my being wanted to rewrite our chemistry, break our atoms apart and put them back together so we were one and whole and unbreakable. 

I hadn’t seen him for three months, and it had taken two weeks after he told me to leave to even get a text message from him. The caverns in me were aching to hear his voice, touch him, love him. I was apprehensive and nervous, he was hollow and pale. He was sick, it was obvious. I was losing him to a nameless death dealer that would never, and could never, love him with the purity he deserved. 

We’d never apologized for the words we shot at one another, something that crossed my mind only after the soul shaking sex and quietly wept tears of sorrow and longing. The reality was that we didn’t need to, not really. 

Watching him sleep, I thought of an alternate universe. One where we had met first, one without Sarah, or distance, or spite. Perhaps he wouldn’t look like he was in the process of evaporating and we would be happy. Or maybe we would have fallen into a sexless routine, a comfortable life together built on trust and stability and the intimacy of words rather than body heat. 

I thought of telling Sarah I’d been seeing someone else.

I thought of Tokyo, of liberation, of honesty. 

I thought of home and what that word meant. 

Home was nothingness. Home was a cold hotel room, a tightly made bed, and too much chlorine in a crowded pool. Home was Matt.

**808**

I sent him a text to say that it felt wrong to be in a hotel without him. That the honesty of a business trip felt more like a lie because he wasn’t there to turn it into magic. He didn’t respond and I wasn’t bothered. 

My day was an endless series of meetings and pitches, heartless businessmen feigning sincerity just to make another dollar and call it a day. I looked forward to the room’s mini-bar, the skype call with Sarah, and the dirty phone call to Matthew when I’d leave him a voicemail in the middle of touching myself. I’d just gotten out of the shower when I saw a missed call from him and a voicemail. It was a bittersweet sort of smile that I offered the notification, happy that he’d called but sad he beat me to the punch. 

The voice in the message was not his. It was a woman’s. Time stopped. I had turned to stone. 

‘Dominic...I...’ There was a pause. ‘My name is Beth. I’m Matt’s older sister. I don’t know…’ She drifted again and seemed to be out of breath. She continued when her breathing returned to normal. ‘Matt’s died. It was an overdose. I’m calling because you are a starred contact in his phone. I don’t know who you are, honestly I don’t want to know who or what you were to him...but...the funeral is happening. This Wednesday in Detroit. You can come pay your respects if you wish. I just...I thought you should know.’ 

I’d collapsed in on myself, naked and withered in a towel on the floor. I couldn’t cry. I was trying to cry or maybe I was trying to dissolve into the ether just to stop the agony that had started to spread fromt my chest into my joints. Breathing felt like swallowing hellfire, moving felt like being ripped apart. 

The sun was coming up before I even bothered to make a sound, the howl of a man with nothing left to live for. 

It felt wrong to be in a hotel room without Matt.

It felt wrong to be alive without Matt.

It felt wrong.

**104**

I’m late, but I don’t know how to move. I managed to make it to the hotel parking lot but I’m frozen, getting drenched in a downpour. I’m choking on my tie, I’m vile in this black suit. I keep telling myself that this is it. This is the last time I’ll get to see you, tell you I love you, tell you I want you, I need you, I breathe you in every hollow inhale I manage. 

But I don’t want to see you.

It won’t be you, not really. You’ll be made of wax, embalmed and forced into the shape of a man you never wanted to be. Death would never suit you - you were always too alive to wear its shade. 

The world around me has blurred. I don’t know if it’s the rain or the tears that’s blocking my vision, but with the world wiped away I can almost pretend you’re here. 

It’s you in the rain, smothering me in wet kisses that soak my hair, my eyes, my lungs, my bones. I tip my head back and smile. You’re on my lips and I can taste you.

I tip my head back and I let you rain over me.

I let you reign over me.


End file.
